Knowledge

The following are almost certainly the four most important questions every senior enterprise executive, especially CIOs and CMOs, should be asking about their big data infrastructure right now. If your answer is anything like ‘we’re working on it’, ‘not sure’, ‘maybe’ or ‘no’ then it’s probably time to act.

Are we ready to handle the massive data volumes expected over the next 3 years?

Are we ready to accept and process a huge growth in sources of data that our business will experience?

Are we able to reliably deliver the data that the business needs at the speeds required?

So we have big data, but is it 100% trustworthy data that will reveal reliable and actionable insight?

Variety, volume, velocity – big data buzz words across enterprise organisations right now. Everyone is anticipating the explosion to come in the next few years. Veracity is the fourth buzz word and the most challenging. It’s not that the first three are easy to achieve in an information management and analytics solution. It’s simply that veracity is all about data quality, governance and security and even the best business intelligence system is next to useless without totally reliable data.

As the ‘pioneers’ of the four Vs concept IBM have been continuing their refinement and development of purpose designed big data technologies including IBM InfoSphere, a suite of tools to enable enterprise organisations to front all the opportunities and challenges the four Vs present. It may be interesting to benchmark your current system against the IBM options.

So, if you have any concerns about the four questions above then our consultants here at EBI, a Premier IBM Business Partner, would be keen to discuss how we might help.